As one might expect when one suddenly finds oneself on the pitching deck of a sailing vessel amid a terrifying storm, Lenora and Lucy immediately lost the koala they were holding as it took the opportunity to break free from their grasp and race across the soaked deck and down an open hatch.
It certainly looks like it knows where it’s going, thought the part of Lenora’s brain that wasn’t immediately engaged in finding something to hang on to. Another pitch of the deck threw the girls into a railing, and both grabbed hold desperately.
“Where are we?” screamed Lucy over the howling wind as spray from another wave crashed over them.
“I don’t know!” yelled Lenora, and was about to add We’ve traveled in time! But she quickly realized this would require too much explaining about how she was able to recognize the time machine strapped to the koala’s forearm (she’d seen one before on the wrist of her time-traveling robot friend), and they really had more important concerns at the moment, such as recapturing the koala and not dying in a shipwreck.
A man in a short white robe carrying a coil of rope came stumbling by. He spotted Lenora and Lucy and stopped dead in his tracks, eyes wide. He shouted something at them, and then another pitch of the deck sent him staggering back off in the direction he’d come.
“I think we’re in the ancient past or something!” screamed Lucy.
“Good guess!” yelled Lenora. Could they make their way over to the hatch and follow the koala belowdecks, she wondered, if even these men, who must be professional sailors, could barely walk? But catch the koala they must, for not only did it have Rosa’s notes, but it had a time machine, and if it vanished again they’d be stranded here in the past in what looked like entirely dire circumstances.
That problem was partially resolved when the koala popped back up out of the hatch, this time carrying a wooden box that was rather too large for it to handle easily, especially when it was being chased by another sailor in a short robe, who was yelling something angrily.
“It’s stealing something else!” screamed Lucy.
Obviously, thought Lenora, also thinking that whatever it was, it must be quite important, for the koala was hanging on to it tightly even though this meant it could not move very easily and could not activate its time machine. Only the wildly pitching deck was preventing it from being snatched up immediately by the man giving pursuit.
Lenora made a decision. She threw herself forward once more, this time not at the koala itself but at its green backpack, which she was sure contained Rosa’s notes on the ancient North American city of Cahokia. She was also certain the koala would not be willing to give up its prizes in the backpack and box, and if she could just get control of the time machine somehow she could use it to get her and Lucy and the notes out of here and back to when they’d come from.
She grabbed hold of the backpack with a cry of victory. But the koala surprised her. It dropped the box, wriggled free from the backpack, and, as the sailor was almost upon it, evidently made the decision that its cause was lost, because it jabbed at its time machine and vanished immediately.
“Drat,” said Lenora.
A blur raced by. It was Lucy, taking advantage of a momentary lull in the storm to chase after the box, which had gone spinning away across the deck. Lenora jumped up and ran after her, while the sailor who had been chasing the koala stood staring in utter astonishment at the spot where it had vanished.
Dodging a couple of sailors who were also taking advantage of the lull to try to fix something on a sail (leaving them no time to gape at what Lenora was sure was her very odd appearance), she chased after Lucy down the length of the deck.
“Come back!” she yelled, thinking that they had to at least get to a relatively safe place belowdecks while she figured out a way to escape their predicament. But Lucy was determined to get that box, and get it she did. She popped off its lid immediately.
“Oh my gosh!” she screamed, looking down at whatever was in the box. She started toward Lenora. “Lenora! This is the coolest thing I have ever—”
And that was all, for then Lucy stepped into a puddle of water in her platform shoes, her feet went out from under her, and she and the box went over the railing and into the wine-dark sea.
Freezing cold water crashed over Lenora as she dove into the waters. She had given it no thought whatsoever before diving over the railing after Lucy, but on the way down she realized she had no idea if the other girl could even swim. Though Lenora was not about to abandon her friend anyway, leaving aside the fact that their situation, bad already, had just gotten immeasurably worse.
Fortunately, Lucy could swim. For when Lenora surfaced, struggling a bit in her dress and still gripping the koala’s backpack (fortunate also that not only could Lenora swim, but was in fact quite a good swimmer), she could see Lucy bobbing in the water, paddling desperately, only a very short distance away. Knowing that they could easily be separated in the rough seas, she kicked toward Lucy and put the arm holding the backpack around the girl as she paddled with her free hand.
Lucy seemed on the verge of tears. “Lenora,” she screamed. “I’m so sorry. I lost the box! It sank.”
“Forget about the box!” yelled Lenora. She was busy looking desperately for the ship. Despair crashed through her as she saw that it had already drifted quite far from them, and in a few more moments had disappeared almost entirely from sight. There was absolutely no way she and Lucy could swim back to it.
An enormous wave came up, and for a moment both girls went underwater. When they resurfaced, sputtering, Lenora almost losing her grip on her friend, she wondered if she should drop the backpack, and then wondered if it even mattered, for there was no help in sight and the two of them were not likely to make it for long in these rough, cold seas.
“What should we do?” screamed Lucy.
It did not help a bit, thought Lenora, that Lucy seemed to harbor no doubts at all that Lenora had a fix for this situation. She hated to disappoint her—and then she felt something bump into her leg. And she remembered:
Rosa, making a strangled, panicked noise, and whipping something through the air into Lenora’s pocket.
Rosa had known exactly what was about to happen, just as Lenora had.
Kicking hard to stay afloat, Lenora stabbed her hand into her pocket. When it came back up, she was holding another of the alien archeologist’s glittering devices, this one the size and shape of a large and heavy pen displaying a lot of swiftly changing symbols that Lenora did not recognize, and one thing she did recognize—a button.
“That’s Rosa’s thing!” screamed Lucy. “I think you should